Our 2012-2013 Kindergarten and Preschool Curriculum

The last couple of years I’ve done some tot school and preschool work with Tobi and Annie, but this is the first year that someone is actually in a grade. Well, kindergarten. This is the first year that, if my kids were going away to school, someone would actually be going to school. Tobi will be 5 in December, and Annie is 3.

I have a really hard time staying organized. I’m not very efficient with my time and I have a tendency to procrastinate (which is why I’m doing almost all of my planning about 2 weeks before I want to start school. You’d think I’d have learned by now to not wait until the last minute.)

Because of this, I really needed to find a curriculum that has it laid out for me. Unfortunately, these types of curriculum tend to be expensive. I also wanted to find a Canadian-based curriculum. While American history and geography may be important, I don’t feel it’s very necessary for a Canadian kindergarten student to know, and I didn’t want to spend our money on a curriculum that I wasn’t going to use in its entirety.

I ended up posting my dilemma on the Canadian Homeschool Magazine’s Facebook group page, and was told about Come Sit By Me. It’s a storybook based curriculum. Basically, each week we will focus on a Canadian storybook. Each 4 week block’s books are related by a unit topic. The curriculum lays out activities and work ideas for almost all subjects, including Bible and memory verses, that the parent can pick and choose from. Easy. So we’ll be using that for most of our subjects.

This is our (mostly) complete course for the year. Assuming things work well for us, of course.

Tobi

Math- Come Sit By Me

– Kindergarten workbook that I got from Walmart, I think

– math journal (I’ll post more about this later)

Science- Come Sit By Me

-I might supplement this with ideas I get from other blogs, Pinterest, etc…just because it’s fun

Geography- Come Sit By Me

Phys. Ed.- Come Sit By Me

Art- Come Sit By Me

– regular kid crafty stuff as he wants to..colouring, painting, etc.

Music- Come Sit By Me

– I want to start introducing the kids to hymns, so I will likely purchase a kids’ hymn CD at some point as well

– Reading Rabbits books that I was given. These are similar to the popular Bob Books, I believe. The books start out very simple, with only a few different words per book, then increase in difficulty as the child’s skills progress.

For Annie, I’ll be including her with what we do in Come Sit By Me for what she is able to do and is interested in. She’ll also take part in our Bible reading and devotionals.

I also have a few workbooks from the dollar store for math and writing readiness. These are basically to introduce the letters (Annie knows a few, but not all), writing skills, numbers, patterns, sequencing, etc. I took the pages from the workbooks, put each page in a plastic sheet protector, then stuck them inside a duotang. The kids can work on these with dry erase markers or crayons and then wipe it clean.

And there we have it! I might add or take away some things as we progress, depending what works for us. But this is what I plan on using this year.

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[…] I mostly used Come Sit By Me, which is a Canadian curriculum similar to Five in a Row. I really enjoyed it! I had several of the books already and I was able to find a few at used book stores. I borrowed the rest from the library’s inter-library loan system. You can find more about the curriculum we used here. […]